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Makers vs Takers: The Developers Dilemma – Conscience over Profit

Earlier this week, VentureBeat featured a guest post by Jason Cavnar, called Why Developers Should Start Choosing Conscience over Profit. This is a subject that the team at Singly cares greatly about and that has helped shaped our company culture and values. Ultimately the demand for developers often faces them with choices between extreme profit and the value of the project on which they are working. No doubt, the future of many innovative companies is at the mercy of developers, but there are many projects that are extremely valuable and important that may not be as lucrative as others.

At the employee level, a growing percentage of Silicon Valley engineers are exploiting a red-hot labor market by jumping startup to startup or cashing in on comfortable jobs in large companies that are overpaying to retain workers. Far too many of them are happy to be peddled by recruiters who exacerbate their god-state with terms like “rock stars”, “unicorns,” and “ninjas.”

Companies and apps that focus on social good, open sourced technology, and crowd funding are delivering great results and the developers who help to create such products are often passionate about their work because they are inspired and happy. These are The Makers.

Makers don’t need to be valued at the highest end of the market. They don’t need the micro-fame of tech blogs. They don’t aspire to be “acqui-hired.” They don’t ask questions about optimizing their paycheck, their communal fame, or their personal brand. And they don’t need good pick up lines (or apps) at the bar. Makers choose their work based on impact and happiness…

We pride ourselves on being a company of authentic, open, and service oriented individuals. Here are our company values:

The post created a whirlwind of comments on VentureBeat, HackerNews, Twitter, and many other social media channels. Although a few opinions are opposing the theme of this post, they do echo the validity and passion behind the issue. Technology innovation is at the mercy of talented developers who are often faced with dilemmas regarding salaries, project integrity, open source vs. closed work styles, and even immigration issues.

The biggest gating factor on the industry’s ability to keep innovating and keep producing more products is the ability to hire more engineers. It is slowing us down.

We’d love to know your thoughts on the issue and how we can all work together to build a more socially connected society through our work, or technology, and our values. Send them to us on twitter @Singly or email community@singly.com.